Gun sale website sued in connection to Westmont woman's death

Brady Center files suit on behalf of family of Jitka Vesel, who was shot by man who allegedly got weapon through Armslist

December 13, 2012|By Dahleen Glanton, Chicago Tribune reporter

Theresa O'Rourke, a friend of slaying victim Jitka Vesel, and the victim's brother, Alex Vesely, attend a news conference announcing a lawsuit filed on behalf of the victim's family against Armslist LLC. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed the lawsuit Wednesday. Vesel was fatally shot last year by a man who allegedly used the website to get a gun. (Heather Charles, Chicago Tribune)

A year after Jitka Vesel was shot to death by a stalker in an Oak Brook parking lot, the former sixth-grade teacher became the face of a new effort Wednesday by gun control advocates to hold a gun sale website accountable for her murder.

A lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence against Armslist LLC, is the latest action putting Illinois at the center of legal battles over the nation's gun laws.

The complaint, which the Illinois State Rifle Association called a "harassment suit," comes on the heels of a federal appeals court ruling Tuesday that handed gun rights advocates a major victory by striking down Illinois' ban on carrying concealed weapons. Illinois, the only state where it is illegal for individuals to carry concealed weapons for protection in public, must appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or put a new law in place within 180 days.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Center brings attention to another heated gun control controversy, this one involving provisions in federal law that allow private sales of firearms over the Internet and at gun shows without background checks.

As Internet use has escalated, gun control advocates said, more firearms are being sold over the Web to people who are not legally qualified to purchase them. Advocates cite such abuses as the reason major websites such as Amazon, Craigslist and eBay no longer allow gun sales through their sites.

Weapons sold over the Internet have been linked to illegal gun trafficking, sales to minors and the mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois universities, gun control advocates said.

Armslist.com describes itself as a free classified site that links buyers and sellers of firearms and ammunition.

Jonathan Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center, said the man who killed Vesel bought his .40-caliber handgun from a dealer he found on Armslist.com. Lowy said Armslist also facilitated the sale of the gun used to kill three people and wound four at a suburban Milwaukee day spa in October.

Officials at Armslist could not be reached for comment. A disclaimer on their website urges visitors to comply with all laws and states, "Armslist does not become involved in transactions between parties."

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Vesel's family is the first against a gun website for allegedly causing a shooting, according to gun advocates and experts. The suit seeks unspecified financial damages.

"It took a click of a mouse to take out Jitka's life," Lowy said at a Chicago news conference attended by Vesel's brother, Alex Vesely, the plaintiff, and the woman's close friend Theresa O'Rourke. "Gun websites are not sufficiently legislated in this country. So if they don't care about taking lives, maybe they will care about their financial bottom line."

The day she was killed, Vesel, 36, of Westmont, was volunteering at the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Brook, where she had been helping prepare for a celebration honoring another immigrant from what is now the Czech Republic, former Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died in 1933 after taking a bullet that was believed to be intended for President Franklin Roosevelt.

According to O'Rourke, who had been friends with Vesel since childhood, the young woman met her assailant, Dmitry Smirnov, a Russian immigrant who lived in Canada, on an online video game site in 2008. After Smirnov visited Vesel and her family in Chicago, she rebuffed his advances and he began stalking her, forcing her to obtain an order of protection against him.

O'Rourke said Vesel avoided contact with Smirnov for nearly three years until April 13, 2011, when he confronted her in the museum parking lot and shot her at least 11 times.

According to the lawsuit, Smirnov contacted a gun dealer in Seattle through Armslist.com. DuPage County prosecutors say he then drove from Surrey, British Columbia, to Seattle to purchase the handgun and ammunition and headed to Chicago. Before leaving Canada, prosecutors said, the 21-year-old unemployed computer technician made sure that Illinois had no death penalty.

Smirnov pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The Seattle man who provided the gun was sentenced to 14 months in prison for illegally selling a weapon to a non-U.S. citizen.

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Illinois' concealed carry ban, said the Brady lawsuit is yet another attempt to place unnecessary restrictions on Second Amendment rights.

"The courts have found dozens of times that people cannot be held responsible for what a third party does," Pearson said. "The people who did that are in jail now. You can't prevent people from breaking the law, but you can make them wish they hadn't."